Corporate front group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has faced increasing scrutiny for secretly passing off corporate-written laws to state legislatures, including the controversial Stand Your Ground gun law. Late last night, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer and biggest seller of firearms in the country, announced it was suspending its membership in ALEC, which the retailer joined in 1993.

“Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC’s decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission ‘to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets,'” Maggie Sans, Wal-Mart’s vice president of public affairs and government relations, said in a May 30 letter to ALEC’s national chairman and executive director.

“We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC.”

Sans is also giving up her role as secretary of ALEC’s private enterprise board.

This is wonderful, and demonstrates the power of the consumer to put pressure on corporations that promote bad public policy. We have a political process for a reason. People vote, not corporations.

http://ingaza.wordpress.com/ the dissenter

They’ll be baaaaaaaaack!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Alan-Lunn/637813505 Alan Lunn

An amazing confluence of good common sense? Corporations have a similar problem with SuperPACs. If you are donating to a campaign, even for political favors, does it outweigh alienating a whole segment of the purchasing public? That’s why they want to get rid of disclosure rules. This whole Citizens United thing is ridiculous even if one can make a Constitutional argument for it (like Eliot Spitzer). We are saying that legalized bribery and campaign secrecy is “constitutional” as well as utilizing anthropomorphism to turn a corporation into “person.” They’ve gone mad.